CLEVELAND (WJW) – With the approach of a new school year, the director of the Ohio Department of Health last month was encouraging parents to have their children immunized according to longstanding state requirements.
Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said the kindergarten vaccination rates have declined to the lowest levels in decades across the nation, adding that all of the diseases on the state’s required list are vaccine-preventable.
“These viruses are real threats to our children and we have real and proven protections in the forms of these vaccines,” said Vanderhoff.
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The state says doctors are seeing more disease, but fewer children being vaccinated.
“Sometimes we may feel like these vaccines are for diseases of the past. Diseases that are no longer relevant today, but all too often we are encountering proof that this simply isn’t true,” Vanderhoff said.
“Measles, we absolutely did eradicate from the United States in the early 2000s,” said Dr. Amy Edwards of University Hospitals in Cleveland. “Unfortunately we backslid a little bit and measles is no longer necessarily fully eradicated from the United States.”